


Not Human

by Aithilin



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Afhanistan, Alternate Universe, Gen, Sherlock is not human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-01 11:54:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John finds a strange man in a cave in Afghanistan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Human

**Author's Note:**

> This was done up super quick as a gift for [Capaow](http://capaow.tumblr.com/) in response to a fic prompt she posted. 
> 
> I was very liberal with it, and probably not what she had in mind.

The man was in the mountains, shrouded in cloaks and blankets, and any number of different— stolen— things to keep the weather at bay. The cave itself, not too far from civilization, was deep and intricate, a small pool bubbling up from a natural font so far back that John had needed his torch to see it (little white fish fled the harsh, artificial light when he tried to determine if the water was safe). 

"You shouldn’t drink that, but it won’t kill you."

John had fired twice before he realized that he hadn’t stumbled on an insurgents’ hiding spot. Though, he did fire twice more when the man— pale, scrawny, dressed in archaic robes— shrugged off the bullet wounds. 

"Must you?"

"Identify yourself. Now."

"No."

"Identify yourself, or I. Will. Shoot. You.”

"Yes, lovely." The man, clutching a threadbare blanket around him to ward off the cold of the stone and dark, stepped closer to the light. Quicksilver eyes drinking in every detail about the foreigner in front of him. "Because that’s worked so well for you already, Doctor."

The man shied away from the torchlight as John tried to examine him. But reacted with little more than a grumble. 

"What are you?" 

"You assume I’m not human?"

"You can’t be. I’ve shot you, and you’re still here." Now, John lowers the gun, looking the man over properly, ignoring the indignation as he tries to take in any clues that might lead to an identity. "So you’re not human."

"No." 

"Then what are you." 

"Bad luck." The man smiles, stepping closer. 

——

"You can tell all that from just looking at me?"

The cave system had come under their control with a relative ease no one had expected. John’s team had found and neutralized traps and key targets with a speed that had amazed them— faulty wiring prevented explosives to detonate, amateur trap layouts had created an easily seen pattern to both the heart of the insurgent stronghold in these foothills, and a disarray among enemy command had kept their losses to a minimum. It was labelled a case of good luck and excellent work. Overall, John had celebrated the success with his comrades, and— in a haze of confidence and joy— had returned to the tiny cavern where he had met the strange man. 

"Observing you, yes." Today, the stranger was dressed in colourful (if tattered) robes, layered against the chill that clung to the dark. "It’s simply a matter of drawing the correct conclusions from the evidence."

"God," John muttered. His torch was propped up against the stones near the pool— the only light despite a disused fire pit not far from the cave’s mouth. "That’s amazing! You’re like Sherlock Holmes."

"Sherlock Holmes?"

"It’s just a series of detective stories. I liked them as a kid, though they were pretty obscure. You’re like the detective, though. He could take one look at a person and tell you everything about them."

A burst of activity from John’s radio signalled the end of his visit, and effectively broke off any further attempts at learning about the strange not-human. Before he left, John filled his flask from the pool, mesmerized for a moment at the shimmer of his light on it. 

"Hey! John, come on." Bill Murray called from the mouth of the cave. "Let’s check in, you freak."

——

For months afterwards, John had started to see the strange man— affectionately nicknamed ‘Sherlock’— around the field hospital. No one else saw him, heard him, or interacted with him. John had found that they would stare through him, or walk around where Sherlock stood or sat, but there was never any sort of acknowledgement of another person hanging around camp.

When he first mentioned it to anyone, John found himself relieved from duty for a few days until he could manage the heat better.

The only exception to this rule of ‘no one but John could see Sherlock’ came when they set up a small clinic for a few days in one of the smaller communities. A small child blatantly stared at Sherlock when the man came to watch a broken limb being set. And an elderly man kept muttering about demons and ‘daeva’ in the hospitals as he lay dying— asking for water, but refusing anything touched by John. 

It had unsettled John to see Sherlock just perch himself by the door to watch the man fade; shooed out when they had a moment’s reprieve from the orderlies and newly trained local nurses. It had unsettled John even more to have the dying man suddenly reach out to him to tell him to pray against the devil’s influence, claiming that he must be a powerful man to send a demon away. 

Sherlock had just laughed at the comments when they met again, and asked for stories of England. 

——

July was a bloody month. Retaliation for misplaced drone strikes meant that John rarely left his operating room. Some new disaster or turn of luck would come in just as he started to think about a break. Between the heat and the blood, and the horrific results of enemy ingenuity, Murray liked to joke that John survived solely on the sludge the mess hall called tea and coffee (and enviously prayed they’d be moved to that base where the Canadians had set up an actual coffee shop). When he was able to steal a few moments alone between shifts, or when he crashed after the adrenaline rush of a twelve hour emergency, Sherlock was there.

On the rare days John was able to leave his sanctuary, Sherlock was waiting for him. They met further away from base, closer to the locals. John once grabbed a bite at the local market on a day off, only to find his strange friend sat on a pile of crates in an alley. 

It was these times when Sherlock would ask about England and John’s knowledge. He was equally fascinated by stories of London escapades, as he was by John explaining what he did for a living. The man would listen quietly, ask questions, and occasionally finish a story for John— “drawing it to its logical conclusion”.

John didn’t even realize it when Sherlock started to mimic his manner of speech. Nor could he remember what the man sounded like before— just that it seemed perfectly natural for that voice to have the tones of London to it.

"Are there any more of you?" John asked, once. "Whatever you are."

"Possibly."

"But not likely." He was getting better at reading the man’s tones; the small smile he received for a correct guess or ‘deduction’ was a welcomed boost to his confidence. "So, if you’re the last one of… whatever you are, why do you keep hanging around me?"

The way those all-knowing eyes turned on his sent John’s stomach to knots. There was no hurt— like a normal person assuming that John had grown bored of the company— reflected there, but a cool detachment. He wanted to rush to his defence, apologize for sounding harsh, reassure his friend that it was okay between them. But Sherlock spoke first, toeing off the faded, ancient silk slippers John had refused to comment on, before drawing himself up like a child waiting for the adult to stop being a moron.

"I like your stories."

John had found that nothing could reflect back on the man. A single sentence could have a thousand meanings, and John suddenly felt very young and very stupid for even bringing up the idea that Sherlock would want to be anywhere else. 

But Sherlock smiled, and all was right in the world— in a war-zone, where John would have to return to his station and operate on boys barely out of their teens. But for now…

"Tell me about this detective you named me after."

—-

Sherlock seemed to be everywhere John went off base. An act of good faith in the community that drew John out to a farmer’s home to tend to a landmine blast, or a crossfire incident, would have Sherlock lingering around the edges to watch. He was there to examine an amputated leg, amazed by the tangle of useless veins and muscle mutilated by whatever bad luck befell the former owner.John hated the way the creature— or he was very much not human then— seemed fascinated by how tangible and frail humans were. 

John started to push Sherlock away when the curiosity about human anatomy came to be too much. Talk of dissections and muscle layout, veins and skin, were not what he wanted to get involved in when he finally had a few moments away from the operating table. However crude that table might be. 

Late August was the turning point. They had called in refreshed troops, welcomed them in as their luck started to change. The cave system captured in the spring proved too extensive for them to keep. Lost ground led to strikes that collapsed part of the foothills into pock-marked rubble with no open access to the elaborate systems tunnelled out below. John learnt from Sherlock that his little cave— with the strange fish and disused fire pit— was closed now, but Sherlock seemed to find it liberating to be out in the open air. 

Despite the increase in activity— skirmishes, stupid accidents, poor navigation, locals becoming targets— John found that he was seeing Sherlock more and more often. Superstitions started to seep into the troops, passed on by the few locals still friendly enough to share their knowledge of the bad spirits brought in by death and mayhem.

By the end of the summer, John was tired of the chaos. He thrived in it, but it took too much out of him. His stories for Sherlock, gently coaxed from an exhausted soldier, were about happier times outside of London. A childhood home, and a gran who kept bees. Harriet’s fear of insects and love of John’s girlfriends. Summers spent up north or far south. The holiday lights along the coast, and the shimmer of the ocean on that one visit to Weymouth (fuck knows why they went to Weymouth when he was a kid, but John remembered the ships and castle, and the view, and Harry trying to scare a sheep that ended up biting her). In his exhaustion and homesickness, John gave Sherlock his life. Every happy moment and childhood misadventure. He didn’t feel any better for it, but he liked the audience, and the way Sherlock seemed to soften for him as he reminisced about his endless summers and school mates.

Sherlock felt like a very good, very old friend. And John wished he could take the strange creature back with him. If he ever got home.

—-

"John."

John hated being a doctor at this moment. Delirious and lost in his own haze of pain, his brain would just not. Shut. Up. 

He could rattle off what needed to be done to stop the bleeding. Assessed just how infection will likely set in. What should be used for the pain.   
It was like looking at it as he always had: from the operating table, rather than from the view that really mattered. 

He didn’t feel it when Sherlock put his hand on the blown out shoulder, slick with blood and clotting his armour to him— it was going to be a bitch to cut away. 

"John."

He sapped to attention, focused on those quicksilver eyes that reminded him of London, and Harry, and his happy days learning to tend to bees with his gran. 

“Please…”

Sherlock smiled above him. 

"God."

"Take me with you, John." He didn’t wonder why he could hear Sherlock in the chaos around him. Why his friend was right there while soldiers tried to get to him and hold off the ambush they had been caught in. "When you leave. Take me to London with you."

John grit his teeth with a short nod— regretting it as the world started to fade. “Let me live.”

The fevered dreams brought on by infection were enough to drive him mad, if the pain hadn’t done that first. He dreamt of home and London, his days at St. Bart’s and the endless days on rotation at A&E. He dreamed of bees and lights, and wonderful, lovely things. 

But he dreamed of death and mayhem. Shadow creatures made of night. London as a battlefield. He dreamed of madmen and strange experiments on human parts left about a Victorian flat. He dreamed of quicksilver eyes that saw everything, but were still so lost in the world. A sniper he once knew. A string of suicides. A painting of a waterfall. And unimaginable loss. 

He dreamed of things almost as bad as war. And some things that seemed pulled from his darkest nightmares. 

He dreamed— pain-crazed and swimming in a haze— of his favourite stories from childhood. Of a Victorian detective who could take one look at you and tell you your life’s story. Who thrived on chaos, but served the good. Because being bad was just too easy. 

He startled awake, eventually. The pain of a destroyed shoulder dulled by a steady drip and the supplies of a hospital far better than the one he had been in charge of out in the dust and death. 

"Hey!" It was happy, boisterous— genuinely surprised. "John! Mate, how you doing?"

Bill Murray was nearby, apparently in to just check vitals and sign off for the next nurse. After the flurry of activity brought on by a miraculous recovery (John though the idea that recovering from a shoulder wound being ‘miraculous’ was hilarious— until the painkillers passed and he could assess just how close it had been), Bill sat with him for a long while. He prattled on about the ambush and roadside attack, how touch-and-go it was until they could get him out of the field hospital, and how the infection ate away at him for days. Bill told him that the guys wished him well, and that he’d get to go home. There would be physio and counselling, because that’s what happened. And it was all very normal and scripted for soldiers like them. 

Like a new set of orders: ‘Go home. Be normal.’

When he finally managed to sleep without a fever boiling his brain, John dreamt of a cave in the mountains, with its own hidden spring, and an ancient creature that looked like a mischievous young man with silver eyes. And strange, white fish that scattered when he shone his light at them.

—-

"You’re the second person to say that to me today."

John was not interested. He was polite, and Mike was a good guy. He couldn’t know that ‘I got shot’ was the Watson way of saying ‘my life is over’.

So John agreed to tea he couldn’t really afford and a sit in the park after a disastrous session with Ella. It was a distraction, at least, while he tried to decide if it was worth the trouble of trying to stay in London.

He realized that Mike was offering him a chance. In his own way; maybe without knowing it. A flatmate would let him stay a while longer, let him fight a while longer. And if he could get something simple as a GP, they might not even cross paths that much.

Maybe he could take some time to try writing out those ideas about the strange creatures found in caves.

"Who was the first?"


End file.
